Before setting off on a seriously long walk,
make sure as many parts of your body as possible work.

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Last week I met each of the women partly pictured above. Can you see what they are up to?

On Wednesday, I held a presentation about the preparations for the walk along the Great Wall for the Norwegian Travellers Club. I spent the following day with a member of the Board of the Norwegian Chinese Chamber of Commerce and applied for a visa for China. Later I met the other members of the Board. PC manufacturer Lenovo has agreed to sponsor the trip with one of their smallest laptops. More on all the above in later posts.

UPDATE: I have now reached agreements with NCCC and Lenovo. You can read more about these here.

Now back to the women.

Gro Marit works as an optician. She did a routine check on my eyes and showed the best way to get rid of annoying sand which there will be plenty of in the Gobi Desert. She provided me with cleaning liquid and a very small container for the lenses. I will have to decide how much of this I can afford to bring along weight-wise. Since I will be away for so long, I paid in advance for contact-lenses for the next one and a half years to be sure that their shipment doesn’t suddenly stop.

Aina works at the Oslo travel clinic. She stuck me in the arm a couple of times with very sharp looking devices and asked me to come back again before I leave for China. She went through my vaccine history and fortunately I have already had most of the necessary shots.Then we went on to talk about other health issues like dehydration, serious infections, tendonitis, breaking a leg (or two), diarrhoea, rabies and mosquito borne diseases.

Hilde is an Osteopath who I have visited at regular and irregular intervals since my kayak trip, when I got a prolapse in the lower part of my back. This is slowly getting better, but it felt reassuring to let Hilde check how my back is and help it along even further. My knee has also started making a clicking noise lately. Although it does not hurt – even when I exercise intensely – I still wanted her to have a look at it.

Hilde (no – a different one) is a dentist, and examined my teeth thoroughly. She took a lot of x-ray pictures and looked for any signs of weakness in my teeth. Although there are no guarantees, at least I have done what I can to make sure my teeth will cause no problem along the Great Wall.

Finally I met Hege, and as you can see, her ‘weapon’ is a pen. She is a reporter for a Norwegian newspaper. We met and talked for more than an hour about the trip and about all the preparations for it. More to come…